All Died Out Read online

  It took twenty minutes to get into town and then through town. Time she spent coaxing the names of the people she needed from the book. Now that the book was working correctly, she was able to ask for the location of each ghost and get the address straight from the page. Lines lit up like Christmas lights so quickly that it was hard to keep track of them, until finally Becker took pity on her. Holding his cell phone up toward her mouth, he let her speak into it so that a voice-to-text message could be sent to her phone.

  “See, aren’t you glad you got something not made in the eighties?” he asked.

  “Sure am.” But she was already concentrating on the first house on the outskirts of town. Bernice Matterton was a bitter old woman who had given up all her furniture when her husband died. Which was fortunate, since she hadn’t loved Harold in twenty years, if ever, and he’d attached himself to an end table.

  An end table that was currently sitting in the house with Bernice on her knees next to the thing, sobbing her eyes out. Mel felt horrible spying through the front window, but there was no other way to find out if the book was actually telling the truth about everyone’s whereabouts.

  Mel did not want to knock on the door. In fact, she’d pretty much rather do anything in the whole wide world—including cleaning out sewage with her bare hands—than knock. Well, maybe not that far, but it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and Mel did not like unpleasant.

  Especially when it involved emotions. And even more especially when they were the messy kind.

  Chapter Nine

  Becker held her hand as he helped her up the walk again. “You can do this. I know you can. We go in, we get the table, and we get out. But first, you’re going to have to let her cry on you.”

  “God, do I have to? I don’t think I can handle that.”

  “Well, you could leave the table, if she wants it. I can’t tell if she’s crying because she missed it and her husband, or if she’s angry that it’s back when she’d finally got rid of it.”

  “The first one, sonny.” Harold poked his head through the glass and addressed them while half in the living room and half outside. Bernice continued to cry as if her heart had broken.

  “So do we let her keep it, Harold? What do you want? I can take you back with me if you want.”

  “No, actually, I think I’m ready to go on to the next phase in life. I was only here until Bernice was able to face up to what she was feeling. I’m not needed, and I feel this lightness that I haven’t felt in years.”

  So he wanted to go on now? But she didn’t have her tools or her paperwork. She couldn’t just perform it on the fly. Honestly!

  “Becker, can you ask Great-Grandpa to take care of the crossing while I move on to the next house? I’ll move ahead, and you guys can catch up with me.”

  “Sure thing.” He walked a few steps away, and Harold followed him, watching his wife the whole time. Mel heard murmurs and moved on, knowing Becker had control of the whole thing.

  Since Mrs. Cairn lived at the next house and had an old exercise bike on her lawn that she probably would rather get rid of for the second time, Mel didn’t even take the step of knocking to ask. She just pointed it out to Derek and kept moving. This could take hours if she talked to every person. At this point, she was going to take what she could and only negotiate, or ask permission, when there was no way around it.

  She’d made it to the last house on the street when Becker came trucking up and ground to a halt with his hands on his knees and his breath heaving.

  “What the hell is going on?” she asked. She really did not think she could take another thing piled on top of the volcano of shit she already had teetering in front of her.

  “I can’t find Great-Grandpa. He won’t come out, and the watch feels different.”

  Mel went to the book to find out where he might be when she remembered that she had never put him in the book, which meant there was no way they could track him. No way to know where he was, or what had happened to him.

  My God, what else could…

  No, she was most definitely not even going to let that thought have room in her head. “We’ll figure it out. Ask Harold if he doesn’t mind hanging out here and waiting. We’ll come back for him this evening when we get everything sorted out.”

  “He already went. I don’t know how he did it, but I asked if he wanted to go for sure, he said yes, and then he was gone. I could feel the difference in the air.”

  With her mouth hanging open, she probably looked more like a fish than a person, but she couldn’t help it. “You just asked the question, he said yes, then he crossed? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, he must have been more ready than we thought. Can’t the ghosts make the choice at any time and just poof out?”

  “Uh, not usually.” She did a quick mental check and figured that now was not the time to try to make things make sense. She’d explain better to Becker once they got back to the house. But if he could do that with just a few casual words, then there might be more going on than just him carrying around a powerful ghost in his pocket. He might actually be powerful himself.

  Another thought to shove aside until another time, because, right now, she needed to get the rest of the items back to the house and figure out what that ghost wanted.

  “Let’s move it along. We can talk when we get home.”

  They made quick work of the other streets in town, and the book helped far more than it had up to this point. It stopped flickering, actually showed her things before she asked, and flipped the ink to black as soon as she had the item in her possession instead of waiting until she got it back to the junkyard. It was weird to have things actually go well for once, but she wasn’t going to bicker about that. She’d just enjoy it.

  As the sun sank in the sky, they headed back to the junkyard. She’d been keeping in contact with the other guys throughout the day. Her dad was still unconscious but okay, and everything was off the road and unbroken. All items were accounted for, but she still hadn’t figured out what the ghost might have wanted.

  It couldn’t be something it had put out on the road, because he could have just taken it with him. It couldn’t be something that had been in town, because he would have just been able to walk off with it and didn’t need her to hand it over physically, no matter what it was.

  If he could move things, then he could have moved himself and the object far out of her reach without going to all this trouble.

  So what did he want?

  She was about to find out. Something, or someone, blocked the entrance to the junkyard. It was about seven feet tall, dark as midnight on a new moon, and had eyes that glowed red.

  She hated glowing eyes, and especially red ones. Things never went well when they were involved.

  “Stay in the truck,” she cautioned Derek and Becker when they both reached for the door handles. “Just stay in the truck for a moment.”

  They didn’t release the handles, but they didn’t turn them, either, and for that Mel was very grateful. She just needed a minute to think, but she didn’t want to close her eyes to take the moment.

  So she stared at the apparition and thought about how it didn’t seem substantial, and it could just be there as a deterrent because whatever was going on was actually farther back in the junkyard. And possibly the bad guy was hoping that she would be too scared to move through this seemingly menacing barrier.

  He didn’t know her very well. And to hell with his thoughts. She knew she could be totally wrong, but she was running out of time, and she was not willing to let the ghost take everything that meant something to her. She didn’t want to lose Becker, or the possibility of that ring in the jar. She didn’t want to lose Mumford, or her father. She loved the junkyard and would do whatever it took to make it safe.

  But she couldn’t just walk in with the book in her hands, hoping this wasn’t a trap but just an illusion.

  “Okay, Derek, I’m going to put this out there because you have the least at stake here.
I need to drive through that thing. It’s not real, and it can’t hurt us, but I can’t walk through it. I have to have speed and the protection of an actual vehicle. So if you want to get down and just wait out here, we won’t think any different of you. Hell, if I could step out and down, I would, but my whole life is at stake in there, and I can’t take the risk of not doing everything I can to save it all.”

  Becker took her hand in his and lifted her knuckles to kiss them. When he put her hand back down, it landed on the book, and she felt the thing vibrate.

  It had never done that before. It scooted a few inches along her thighs as if it were being pulled away from her. She tightened her grip and nodded at Becker, then at the book.

  He got the message and placed his hand on the book to keep it right where it was. “Do you think that’s what it is? It wants the book? But how could it have belonged to a ghost when it’s always been in your family?”

  “Questions for another time and ones I’d definitely like answers to, but not this very moment.”

  She turned back to the driver to find him with his hands gripping the wheel tightly and his teeth clenched. Was he possessed? Because this would all go to shit very fast if something had possessed him.

  “Let’s do this.” He put his hand on the book, too, then moved it to the gear shift. “I’m not going to be left out in the road when I can help save the place that means so much to so many spirits. You do good work here, Mel, and my family’s been part of this world for a lot of years. If you’re in, so am I. Hold on!”

  He gunned the engine, hauling ass through the thing, whatever it was. It howled, but that was about all, and then they were tearing down the drive, tattered pieces of black zooming at them from all sides, trying to attach to the windshield to make it impossible for Derek to see where he was going. The smart man turned on his windshield wipers and the shreds were gone. Mel couldn’t help it—she cackled in glee, and also to cover the fear. They were going in to something she had never faced, but by God this was her sanctuary, just like it was a sanctuary for so many other things, and she was tired of it being under assault every time she got settled in. The Yosemite Sam ghost had chosen the wrong damn female and family to mess with if it thought that taking what was hers was going to be easy.

  Hell or high water, she was going to make this right, and she was going to do it with the people she loved and valued.

  That was all there was to it. A plan would come to her as she faced each obstacle along the way. Right now, she was just along for the ride, zooming down her own drive, going fast enough that a cop car would have had a hard time catching them. And strangely enough, all felt right with her world.

  Chapter Ten

  “Okay, so when we get to the house, we jump out and make a run for the front door. The house is warded.” Not that it kept Yosemite from doing his thing before, but it was better than being out in the open. She hadn’t found Chester yet and didn’t know where his snuff box was, but she would find it and him, and then they’d get to work. First, she needed to break down the door to that room where all the new objects that were catalogued were housed, because she just knew in her very soul that something had come into the junkyard that shouldn’t have in that shipment from the auction.

  Why else would no one have bid against her dad? Why else would he have gotten thousand-dollar pieces for a quarter? There had to be something wrong and some reason that the objects from that particular house wanted to come to this particular place. Ghosts were capable of manipulating things, more than live people in many ways, since they could possess and mind control in a way that no breathing human could.

  Derek slammed on the brakes to stop inches from the front porch. They all jumped out of the truck and made a mad dash for the front door. It flew open, and her mother stood aside as they entered, but slammed it as soon as they cleared the threshold.

  “Thank God, you’re back,” she said breathlessly. “Your father is convulsing, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  Mel glanced at Becker, who was yanking off his jacket. “I’m on it.”

  “If you can find Great-Grandpa, please get him on it, too.”

  “Will do,” he answered Mel as he dashed for the living room.

  Now was not the time for indecision, and Mel refused to let fear grip her. Whatever was going on, she would figure it out, and she would take it down to the depths of hell if she had to before she let it destroy her life.

  “Derek, you’re with me.”

  “Tell me what you want, and you got it.”

  “Go into the kitchen and get the cookie jar on top of the refrigerator. Don’t mind Mrs. Hatchett if she comes out to yell at you. I need her and everyone else I can find. Call them all to you. All of them.”

  “Will there be room?”

  “There’ll have to be.”

  Derek left toward the kitchen, and Mel gave herself exactly three seconds to tremble in her fancy princess sneakers, and then she shook it off like an irritating spider.

  “I can do this.” She took in a deep breath, let it out, and bellowed, “Come to me. NOW!”

  Honestly, she wasn’t sure what, or who, she was calling, but she wanted it all to be in front of her, and then she’d handle whatever that was.

  What she got was Mumford, and with him, Dougal.

  “Get out to the outhouse, Mel. Bring Becker. We have to go back, but we need you there.” Mumford ran off faster than she’d ever seen him run before, and truthfully, when she looked closer, he wasn’t actually running but moving his legs as Dougal zoomed low to the ground with the dog under his arm.

  How was everyone touching things enough to move them deliberately for long periods of time?

  “Becker! We need to go! I know where.”

  Becker banged open the screen door. “If we can’t do something soon, I have to call the paramedics. I can’t have your father die in here if we could save him.”

  “Oh, we will save him. Do you have your watch?”

  Becker yanked it out of his pocket.

  “Good, let’s go.”

  “But he’s not responding.”

  “That’s because he’s in the middle of something else.”

  As she ran through and around the many things in the junkyard, she started putting pieces together—that only the ghosts in the book were gone, that only the ones with homes nearby could be moved farther away, that Becker’s great-grandfather was unreachable, which was so out of the norm. The fact that the book was the only thing that hadn’t been moved, and couldn’t be moved, without her. She’d bet nearly anything the book was the thing the ghost wanted. She wasn’t sure why, but she was about to find out.

  Rounding the final corner, she reached back for Becker’s hand, and they broke through a haze of ghosts together to find Patrick Becker and the man with the mustache grappling in front of an old outhouse with a moon carved out of the door that had stood on the property since the days before her great-grandfather.

  Should she break in between them? Should she wait to see what the older man could do now that his receptacle was close? The first was never going to work, since she couldn’t really break the fight up. She was a living, breathing human instead of a ghost, so she couldn’t touch them. Damn!

  The second possibility she couldn’t do either. Waiting would be agony. Something had to be done. Now.

  The ghost yelled a guttural, very dirty word, and Mel decided not to wait.

  “Becker, we need in. Get behind your great-grandfather, and I’ll get behind the other ghost. We have to relieve him somehow, and the book is what the bastard is after. Let’s see what he’ll do if he thinks I’m going to give it to him.”

  “Mel…”

  “I know what I’m doing.” Not really, but at this point she was all in, and all in meant exactly that.

  “Okay.” He kissed her and went to stand behind Patrick Becker.

  “Hey, jackwad, this what you’re looking for? You didn’t even let me have the full twenty-four
hours. Too scared because I wasn’t playing by your rules?”

  He let go of Patrick and stood, straightening the lapels of his old-school suit—if Mel had to guess, she’d say about late 1800s or so.

  “You’ve brought it. Come to your senses, did you, lassie?”

  “I don’t know if I’d go that far.” Her mind raced. She had no plan, no idea what he wanted the book for, no idea how he even knew about it, and no reason to think she was going to escape this unscathed. But she had a lot at stake, and that made the whole thing worth it. “What are we doing here?”

  “You’re going to give me the book so that I don’t make ghosts out of all the people you love, and then I’m opening up a door. One I’ve waited for years to open.”

  “A door? Where?” Maybe if she stalled, it would give her time to think of something. Anything! At all!

  “Right here.”

  “But the outhouse already has a door.” She wasn’t that stupid, but again it was stalling. She had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach about this door, but until he actually said something she wasn’t going to borrow trouble.

  He laughed, and it was a gnarly sound like grating glass under fingernails on a chalkboard gnarly. “Stupid girl. Your great-grandfather was no smarter, and I knew he should never have been entrusted with this. It could have been a whole different world, but his stupidity can only be remedied now, not reversed.”

  “Hey, now, my great-grandfather was not stupid. He built this thing to be what it is. And we’ve all helped.”

  “Yes, helped make it worse. You barely know what you’re doing, and you certainly don’t know what you hold in your hands. Give it over, and I’ll show you all the wonders it can do.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Give it over, Melanie Hargrove.” He crooned the words, and she found herself reaching out to him.

  Oh, hell, no! That was so not happening. But why did she even start? She clasped the book to her chest again.